5 free media monitoring alerts

5 free media monitoring alerts

7th November 2017 42 By Rachael Stray

It’s impossible to monitor everything when there is so much happening online but fortunately, there are some web monitoring tools that can help you keep updated with mentions of your brand.

5 free media monitoring alerts

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is the original media monitoring tool and are e-mailed (or you can subscribe to the RSS feed) alerts of Google results.

Step 1: Type in the search term.
Step 2: Pick which kind of search type you want: News, blogs, web, video, groups, or comprehensive (which includes all of the above search platforms).
Step 3: Pick how often you want the updates (as it happens, once daily, or once a week)
Step 4: Pick the e-mail length (up to 20 results or up to 50 results).
Step 5: Pick whether to deliver it to your e-mail inbox or as a feed.
Step 6: Hit subscribe.

Personally I’ve not found Google alerts to be terrible reliable which is why I use more than one tool.

TalkWalker

Talkwalker is a tool I’ve used for a couple of years and I really like it.

It’s a social data intelligence so predominantly looks at social media rather than coverage mentions (for which you can monitor everything from reach, engagement and audience activity).

It does also look at coverage mentions.

Talkwalker lets you monitor the web for your name, brand, competitors, events or any favorite topic.
You set up your alerts in a similar way to Google Alerts:

  • You enter your keyword in the search query.
  • Then narrow down the search parameters from everything to news/blogs/discussions.
  • And then decide on a daily or weekly email of all the results or only the best results.

Results can also be directed to your RSS feed reader.
I’ve received some obscure coverage for the organisations I work at which have never been picked up by Google alerts.

A word of warning though before you click through to the links – you quite often pick up pornographic content (you can usually tell when you read the preview) but if nothing else you get a few laughs in the office! 

Buzzbundle

Buzzbundle is a social media management tool that can track your brand mentions. You can set up groups of keywords to track mentions of yourself, your company, products, and services and it’s also great for finding your competitors and their keywords too.

You can get a free license for BuzzBundle and use it for as long as you see fit, absolutely free of charge.

You do have to download it though.

Anewstip

Anewstip is a media search, monitoring, and relationship management platform with an enormous database with more than 200 millions news articles and 1 billions tweets.

It lets you search for relevant media contacts by what they have written or tweeted and lets you monitor news articles and tweets related to your brand, competitors, or any other keywords.

Email alerts are delivered to your inbox whenever there are new results, so you can keep up with what’s happening and discover new media contacts.

Once you’ve found relevant contacts, you can add them to your lists and then use the tool to send a pitch to the contacts.

There is a free plan which is limited but there’s paid for package plans too which mean you get more searches and pitches if you’re willing to pay for it.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a bit of a favourite tool of mine. Not only can you use it to schedule social media posts it also helps you monitor keywords and phrases too.

You can use Hootsuite to set up streams that let you track conversations and keywords and you can also directly respond to the mentions from Hootsuite.

Plus if you’re working in a team, you also have the option to assign the task of responding to someone else.

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What are your favourite tools for monitoring media coverage? Let me know in the comments below.

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CategoryBlogging tips Communications content Social media Support and advice
Tagsalerts communications external comms external communications free Google Google Alerts Hootsuite infographics marketing media media monitoring PR public relations TalkWalker

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